And how do you refrain from wasting it? This is primarily a question for the less established screenwriters but I'd like the more experienced to offer their take. Personally, I've already made the decision to stay away from querying agents, based on personal accounts from others. I also think it's a waste of time, when I could be pitching and listing and getting important people to remember my work, even if it's not an immediate success. Thought I'd share this article: http://goodinaroom.com/blog/great-query-letter-hoax/ Has anyone here had success with querying agents specifically? Have contests worked better for you? An article I read recently suggested filming a cheap few minutes of your script and distributing it online to garner interest. That was my plan as I'm just applying finishing touches but I'm currently outside the US, so it's not practical right now.
Screenwriting : Getting Exposure for Your Script: How do you maximise your time? by A Alex
Getting Exposure for Your Script: How do you maximise your time?
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Hi A Alex, I'm speaking from my personal experiences as a former agency assistant, former studio exec, and as a producer. In my experience, query letters work, but the odds are long odds. To maximize your time, what I recommend to people is to spend time on query letters after you've built some credibility into your query letter. For example, I consulted for a NY comic book artist-turned-writer. He was a Semifinalist in Screencraft's screenplay contest. Once he became a Semifinalist, he acquired credibility, and his query letters were met with script requests. Before he was a Semifinalist, I don't think he received any script requests. Or maybe you position yourself as a subject matter expert. For example, "I served as an embassy employee in Germany during the fall of the Wall. I've written a memoir about...." You'd have credibility there too. This is only my experience. I believe query letters get better results when you have some kind of credibility built in. Then again, if you have a concept that hooks your reader, that will outweigh the need to build in credibility.
Thanks Regina. I'm curious about people's experiences. The author of the article I linked to says she is a S32 member, and that whilst pitches here are good that the execs here aren't the ones who greenlight a movie and so it's better to make personal contacts. She just so happens to have written a book on that. I'm not disagreeing with personal contacts being an ideal way to expose your work, but realistically most people cannot do this. Even those who reside in LA. Personally, I consider pitches at places like Virtual Pitchfest to be rather useless, as your work is likely read and responded to by interns. Even considering the vast amount of bad writing, it's suspicious that there aren't more solid successes. I only hear about people have "read requests", which I interpret as a business method to hook clients and get them to keep on purchasing pitches. I have similar feelings about most contests. I recently noticed a contest advertising for readers in the free section of Screenwriting Staffing. It's better to stick to the few established ones, I suppose. There are simply too many eager to capitalize on the hordes who want to sell a screenplay that isn't marketable.